Bummer Day

Caiden had his 6 month check up today. Caiden behaved pretty well and from here on out all check-ups will be done in mine or B's lap. Apparently around this age, babies start to freak out about strangers poking and prodding at them and handle it better when safely nestled in mom or dad's lap. Caiden has gained an inch and a half since his last visit in August. He is now 28.5 inches long! He's also on track for all of his developmentals - sitting up, tracking things with both eyes, focusing with both eyes, transferring items from hand to hand, etc. But with good news, there is sometimes not so good news. We got hit with a triple whammy. :(

1. Poor little guy has an ear infection. The right ear is inflamed and the left ear ranks a 9 out of 10 on the doc's severity scale. :( Curiously enough, he's given us barely any indication that his ear is not at 100%. Key indicators include fever and waking up in the night crying. He's been waking a little more frequently in the overnight hours, but nothing more than a few peeps or happily gurgling to himself. I had an inkling a couple of weeks ago that he might have an ear infection - he was pulling on his ear a lot and woke up crying two nights in a row about an hour after going to bed. But by night 3 the behavior ceased, so I thought nothing more of it. The good news is we've got him started on an antibiotic and hopefully things will have cleared up by his next visit in 2 weeks.
2. He has actually lost weight. At this age, babies are usually gaining weight at the rate of 1-2 pounds per month. And he's not crawling yet, so there is no extra burning of calories going on. Weight loss at this age is not a good thing, so we're under orders to up his calorie intake. I suspect that the weight loss has partly to do with having been in day care last month and needing more milk than I was leaving for him. But I was having trouble with my milk supply and could barely sustain the 15 oz I was pumping for him each day. He always finished his bottles at the daycare which likely means he could've been taking in more milk. So I'm squeezing in extra feedings (and hoping my milk supply picks back up) and we're definitely getting him going on solids in an effort to beef up those calories. Doc wants to see at least one pound gain in the next two weeks.
3. After MONTHS of deliberation, we finally decided on which vaccine we were comfortable starting him on. We decided on Hib because it has the least amount of non-organic ingredients in it, Hib can cause some serious infections and wide-scale immunizations over the last several years have driven the numbers of cases down so we felt we should contribute the the "herd immunity" this vaccine can provide. Well, wouldn't you know it Hib is experiencing a nationwide shortage and won't be available until January. However, we could give him a shot that included DTaP, Polio and Hib. Uh...no thank you. We're barely ready to give him one vaccine, much less a shot that includes FIVE.

So this really wasn't the best of visits, but all things considered it wasn't all that bad. In the meantime, here is a cute video of Caiden's first efforts at eating solid foods - 1 Tbsp of rice cereal dissolved in 4 Tbsp of water.